


Elsewhere

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cameos, Fix-It, Gen, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 08:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: The Crown Prince is injured in a tragic attack on the road. The King, in his desperation, presents his broken boy to the benefactor of all his power: the Crystal of Lucis.Ten years later, Noctis returns.





	Elsewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as a prompt fill [here!](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/180351008067/noct-going-into-the-crystal-at-age-10-instead) And it's... gonna be wild, friends. Strap in!

He was afraid.

Even though he knew that he shouldn’t be. Even though he knew that his position all but demanded unflinching fearlessness, and that, while his duties came with their own set of unique challenges, those difficulties were a pittance to pay in comparison to the tolls disbursed by the Crown.

Ignis wasn’t usually prone to fidgeting. He wasn’t usually prone to bouts of paralytic terror, either. But standing before the Crystal as a part of the royal assemblage, beside his benefactors and his peers and still feeling so unfairly afraid in the face of such larger, collective fears… it felt like all he could do _not_ to fidget.

He felt as nervous as a ten-year-old again, trying so hard to look and act as big and as strong as all of the adults in the room. Even twenty years old now, and even taller than the wizened old stoop of the King himself, Ignis still felt like the smallest person in the room.

He wondered if that was how the Prince would feel.

He wondered if he would feel as small as a child in a young man’s body, or if he would still be that child from ten years ago. He wondered if Prince Noctis would step from the Crystal wholly changed, or entirely untouched by time.

He wondered if he would remember him.

Ignis remembered a little boy, mop of charcoal hair in his eyes, which were big and blue and full of wonder. He remembered the innocence of a shared youth, of climbing trellises in the royal gardens, of nicking knees on rose bushes and ruining stealthy escapes by sneezing over chrysanthemums. He remembered star charts and finger paintings across glossy, mosaic floors; primitive portraits of the spirits Noctis imagined in the constellations they studied. He remembered sulking over split pea soup for dinner, and breaking into the Citadel kitchens after midnight to bake mint cupcakes to prove that something edible really _could_ come from green.

He remembered when he was unafraid. He remembered feeling braver when he was ten than he was now that he was twenty.

He remembered the carefree days before the King came home with ashes in his hair and a limp doll of a son in his arms. He remembered fairytales before prophecies, hope before doom; light before dark.

He remembered when the King’s spine had been so much straighter than the brittle hunch of it beside him now. He remembered jet-black hair before the wisps of ghostly gray. He remembered the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes before the purple bruises of restless nights beneath them.

And he still remembered the empty, colorless void of his stare when he walked from the Crystal’s chamber, raiment still dark with his son’s blood, but no Noctis in his arms to bleed.

Now, the anxiety in the chamber was frenetic. Maybe Ignis wouldn’t be blamed for being so nervous when members of the royal council that were of such higher esteem than he, were just as frantic in their silence.

The King’s Shield – his oldest, most impenetrable ally – stood wired to snap, forcing his face into such a stiff mask of indifference that it was almost comical if not for the seriousness of the circumstances. His son beside him was constantly shifting, arms crossed behind him, then in front of him, then flexing at his sides, adjusting his feet beneath him as if he couldn’t find sturdy enough ground to stand on; a reflection of the nervousness his father was trying so hard not to show.

The King’s Marshal _paced._ The immovable stoic, the stone sculpture of the Crownsguard ideal, who never budged for anyone lest he was one inch too far away from protecting the King, now marched behind the line they made like a caged coeurl; like he was ready to be the first to run – either to Noctis when he came, or out the door before he did. Ignis couldn’t tell. Not how Cor felt, or how he himself did.

No one knew what to expect. Try though they may to comprehend the power of the Crystal, the secret of its magic remained behind the King’s hollow stare. And though they might be free to ask, he could never tell them what compelled him to beg the artifact for his son’s survival, _why_ it could function as his savior when all other hope seemed lost. Whether it was because he was bound by some sacred law to keep the Crystal’s secrets, or he was too afraid to tell them the truth, once more, Ignis didn’t know.

And it was the unknowing which scared him the most. Which scared all of them the most.

When Noctis was given to the Crystal, he was a ruined body, comatose, plead for by a desperate father. A father who, various times throughout the past ten years, had lost hope that he would ever see his son again.

Then, on a slightly overcast, summer day of no particular significance, with the Citadel workers droning along their business circuits with manila folders and paper coffee cups, the Crystal called to the King.

Their prince was ready to return.

But Ignis wasn’t sure _he_ was ready.

His chest thumped in time with the Crystal’s pulse, primal, eldritch breath exhaling from the obsidian stone. This was the first time – and, gods, he prayed it was the last – Ignis had ever been permitted within the Crystal’s chamber to see it. The communion between Kings and Crystal was a sacred rite, unsullied for two thousand years by the influence of outsiders to the bloodline.

But as the years had circled on, and as the King’s broken heart turned bitter with each passing season reminding him of a childhood absent from filling his hollow halls with laughter, he cared little for the ceremonies of the past. He cared only that his son lived. That he himself would live to see him again.

King Regis stared down the heart of the Crystal, his gaze as unknowable as the secrets he kept about Lucis’s oldest treasure. The Crystal’s pulse quickened, not unlike a nervous heartbeat itself. For a moment, Ignis wondered if it might be Noct’s heartbeat, growing more anxious as he approached.

He wondered if Noctis was just as afraid as all of them.

The Crystal’s beat grew faster and faster, a hum bumping against the back of Ignis’s consciousness like a headache behind the eyes. And the light of the Crystal itself was blinding, whiting out his vision in sharp bursts that culminated into one, long swathe of sightless white. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from it, like looking too long into the sun. And when he lowered it, blinked the spots from his eyes, and was able to see again…

There was Noct.

Ignis recognized him in an instant. He was so, _so_ different, but Ignis only really noticed that he was after the first glance. Because in that brief flash of blue eyes skating across his, meeting his across the white-out for just a moment before reality settled once more, Noctis was completely the same.

He wasn’t eight-years-old anymore, standing instead in lanky, eighteen-year-old skin that he wore like a coat that was two sizes too big for him. But Ignis still recognized the boy he knew in the wide-open blue of his eyes. The lines of his face were a little sharper now, more angular, traits from his father just starting to stand out, but there was still a softness to his cheeks, still a fairness to his features that spoke to a childhood not yet shed for the cynicism of adulthood.

He stood a little crooked, one knee slightly bent, narrow shoulders lop-sided and stiff, fists at his sides, holding tight to his disquieting calm. Pale-skinned and shaggy-haired, dark locks a bird’s nest tangle about his face, but though there was a wildness about him, a sharpness to his curious gaze left without blunting by the Citadel’s monotony, there was still that same wonder. Those same questions Ignis never remembered having the answers for during playtime, or homework, or just talking about everything past bedtime.

The King moved first, hobbling one step forward with his cane. His son’s name bled like an old scar from his lips. “Noct?”

Noctis tentatively stepped away from the Crystal, towards King Regis. He had an awkward gait, not quite limping, not flinching with every step like he was in pain, but his steps had a discordant rhythm to them, a heavier tread to one side that made it uneven. His fists trembled, like anchors straining to keep a ship from sailing away, and as he drew closer across the walkway, Ignis realized he was holding something in one.

He stopped a foot away from his father, drew in a reedy breath, and opened a hand in front of him. Offering them both proof that they were father and son, not a hopeless man and his hallucination. A token in his palm that only the two of them would understand.

It was a tiny, wooden fox. Chipped and misshapen with ten years of use, but a symbol they both recognized as clearly as they recognized each other.

King Regis’s cane clattered to the floor, and he embraced Noctis so fiercely, Ignis feared he might break the both of them in two. If not, then it certainly broke Ignis’s heart to see the King’s tears. Broke it even more to see the delicate smile wavering on Noct’s lips.

He was so happy to be home.

* * *

“Hey, Iggy.”

His voice was different, obviously. Lower, darker, husking through the afternoon umber of the sunset like campfire smoke through pine needles. And yet, the way he said it – _“Hey, Iggy”_ – greeting him with that shy brightness which transformed his older face into the memory from his childhood… it was all the same.

It had been days since his return that Ignis was able to request an audience – until he could bear to tear the Prince away from his bereaved father, so overwhelmed with gratitude for his return that it was as if he was grieving all those ten years at once, all over again. But as acute the pain of their separation was felt between them now, just as great was the joy in their reunion.

Ignis couldn’t take him away from that. He couldn’t take him away from any of them. Not his father, not “Uncle Clarus,” and not “Uncle Cor,” either – _especially_ not Uncle Cor; there was a katana through the midsection just waiting to happen.

Ignis was the last to reunite with Noctis. And it was just as well. It gave him time to reconcile the hollowed out feeling in his gut when all of his terror in the Crystal’s chamber had been carved out and dumped to the side in a bucket of relief.

Now, he could finally remember his manners; the etiquette expected of him in his position. He remembered to rise from his chair before the Prince reached the table, remembered to press his palm against his chest and bow, remembered to greet him as “Your Highness,” and remembered to put his comfort before his own – to pull out his chair, to make sure the sun-glare through the windows wasn’t in his eyes, to help him sit when he noticed the rigidity with which he levered himself down into his seat. Noctis gently waved off his obligatory courtesies, pressing himself into his seat and gesturing for Ignis to retake his own.

They were high above Insomnia on the dining floor often reserved for upper-class galas, but occasionally used to host the staff for holidays and other such labor appreciative events. The room circled the base of the Citadel’s tower, like a disk held aloft above the clouds, the vast city spread out underneath them like a miniature replica. The long bridge to Lucis was a silver needle sewn across the bay in the distance, the dark waters burnt gold in the dusk.

They sat down by the window, Noctis making a visible effort not to gaze out at his old home in wistful recollection. Ignis couldn’t imagine how overwhelming everything was for him; to return to a world that, while mostly unchanged, looked so much different from behind adult eyes.

He’d been given fresh clothes, of course. Custom-tailored Lucian fatigues that the King had commissioned well in advance – he’d had various outfits meeting various measurements made, trying to predict how tall Noctis would be when he came back – _if_ he came back – how wide he might be, how soft the fabric should be depending on how his skin might have changed – would it still be as soft as he remembered when he held his tiny toddler to his face to kiss him goodnight? Would it be tougher after being molded by the Crystal’s magic? Would it be delicate after the injury which had forced them apart in the first place?

Noct’s hair was combed out – an effort that no doubt took hours to smooth it from its snarled state. It fell in soft waves around his face, still a little wild, but clean, cut, and more comfortable than the knotted mess he’d first stepped out with. He looked healthy, fed, doted on by the father that missed him so painfully for the past ten years.

Though, while he’d been groomed and pampered to acclimatize him to modern Lucis, he still looked like a man out of time. Still looked out at the world with uncensored fascination – and a little edge of fear. Fear that he might never catch up to all that he missed, that he might never regain the identity he was stolen from.

That he might not have a place in his old life.

Ignis didn’t know how to tell him that there was no way his family wouldn’t accept him. That his whole kingdom wouldn’t accept him! That he was never once forgotten for the past ten years. That he was always in Lucis’s thoughts, honored everywhere with memorials crafted like altars for the people to pray for his safe return.

Instead, Ignis could only default to the stupid, insensitive ice-breaker to their silence that he’d learned to ask of every guest to the Citadel.

“How are you settling in?”

As if he’d only been gone for a week. As if he’d only been across the bay, vacationing somewhere on the coast of Caem. As if this was just another day, settling back into the routine of Citadel life. The past ten years had, evidently, not placed only Noctis out of place.

“As well as can be expected, I guess,” Noctis replied, and Ignis was so not used to the eloquence with which he spoke. “It’s been…”

“Overwhelming?” Ignis stopped himself, bit the inside of his cheek – _don’t interrupt the Prince when he’s speaking_ – “My apologies. I can only imagine how strange all of this must seem.”

Noctis didn’t seem to mind the interruption. In fact, it seemed to hearten him a little, lifting his small smile at the edges. Finishing his sentences had been a habit Ignis thought had been long broken from their lost childhood together. Ignis’s chest swelled when Noctis smiled like that. Noctis remembered, too.

“It’s going to take a while to get used to it,” Noctis went on, distracted once more by the expanse of the city below. “It’s all different, but a lot of it’s the same, too. The important things, anyway. Dad’s still Dad. Cor’s still Cor. And you’re still you.”

Ignis blinked once, a reflex when Noctis met his eyes and smiled at him. It was as if he couldn’t look directly at him, too unused to the light in his face to focus properly. Ignis told himself not to be ridiculous, and maintained eye contact like an adult.

“As are you… Your Highness.”

The honorific came as an afterthought. As did the presumptuousness of his reply, the informality that, for some reason, he couldn’t seem to get under control. He was still treating Noctis like his childhood friend, not like his liege-lord. It appeared they both had some adjusting to do.

“You can still call me Noct, you know. If I can still call you Iggy?”

Ignis’s conflict with decorum came to a ceasefire for a moment. He swallowed the social platitudes that were backing up his throat and held Noct’s stare. There was an entreaty there. A plea for the familiarity of their childhood camaraderie. Of being friends more than being positions in the royal hierarchy.

Yes. He was still Noct. And, of course, he was still Iggy.

“Always, Noct.”

That made the Prince smile. _Really_ smile. Smile like the little boy Ignis remembered, eyes closed and cheeks round and overjoyed to be accepted as he always wanted to be. Ignis could have bust out and bawled for how happy it made him to see his old friend again. To know that he didn’t have to be afraid of change if Noct would still have him as “Iggy.”

Because he really didn’t know if he was ready to be “Ignis the Chamberlain.” Ten years of preparing himself for that title, of training himself to be ready for the day of the Prince’s return, and the second it came, the instant it was real, the foundation he’d built for himself in preparation crumbled underneath him.

“I missed you, Iggy.”

“I worried about you, Noct,” Ignis sighed, deflating all of his adult responsibilities down into a slouch in his chair. “If it’s… If it’s not a sore subject…”

“What was it like?”

Ignis lowered his eyes to the table and the empty plates set out between them. He had meant to have some food brought up for the two of them. But talk of the Crystal eradicated his appetite. And Noctis didn’t seem too keen on eating, either. When Ignis looked back at him, he was looking down at the Carbuncle figurine in his hand. Ignis hadn’t even noticed he had it.

“I still remember the first day I woke up in there,” Noctis mused, eyes hooding like he was trying to shade himself from the memory. “It was scary. Everything was empty. No one around. Not my room or the trees in the garden or anywhere I could recognize. I thought I must be dead.” While he didn’t say it, Ignis could envision the scared little boy in a strange, empty void, crying out for his father, his friends, anyone to come and find him. It made him want to throw up. “That first day was the worst of it, though,” Noctis went on. “Because after that, I wasn’t alone.”

He set the old totem on the table between them, finger brushing gently across the chipped ears. He smiled.

“This little guy kept me company. He made me worlds to dream through, places to travel, toys to play with; a friend to guide me through it all. It’s… a little hard to explain, how ‘growing up’ really worked. How time passed. Because it didn’t feel like ten years like it would feel out here. I had someone explain that to me. I had lots of people help me understand. People that… weren’t from around here.”

“Not people from Lucis?”

“Not people from _Eos_ , Iggy.”

Ignis stalled at that. Beings from another world? Was that the magic of the Crystal? Was it a portal to other dimensions? _Were_ there dimensions beyond their own? Dimensions beyond the Astral Realm?

“These weren’t the Six, then?” he asked, leaning forward on the table, hands clasped as he tried to comprehend what Noctis experienced. “And not the Lucii from your father’s Ring?”

Noctis shook his head.

“No Astrals. No Lucii. Just Carbuncle. And the voices of people through other crystals.”

Noctis told him about strangers from other worlds. Soldiers, summoners, warriors of light, knights of dead goddesses, thieves and pirates, lost queens and time travelers. Fantasies crafted by Eos’s own dream god, Ignis thought. Noct’s fairytales from the childhood he was missing, come to life to comfort him while he healed.

But as Noctis talked... Ignis doubted. He couldn’t pretend to understand the Crystal, couldn’t fathom what it was capable of. He read once that it was the “soul of Eos.” He read somewhere else that it “had its own will;” as if it were an organic entity capable of thought. He read that it was the heart of a dead goddess, a gift from the Six they all knew, and, in old, _old_ texts that were nearly impossible to translate, that it was an omen of misfortune, a curse upon the Kings of Lucis.

But the way Noctis told it, it wasn’t any of those things. It was a gateway. A conduit to other lords and ladies, knights and thieves, heroes of crystals scattered across the cosmos.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Noctis mused, his face fond as he played idly with the totem on the table, tipping it back and forth on its front paws. “I learned a lot. They taught me how to fight, how to cast spells – one taught me how to heal. And they taught me about gods. About fate. Destiny.”

He pursed his lips, then. His gaze darkened. Ignis had learned about Noct’s destiny as the “Chosen King” since his absence. That he was destined to save their world from the scourge which infected it, which lengthened the nights, and which the Oracle of Tenebrae, barred in her country and forbidden from aiding Lucis in its time of need ten years ago, combatted to this day with her gifted magic from the gods.

“Iggy… this is going to be an odd question... Don’t be mad?”

“Of course not, Noct.”

He almost reached across the table to hold his hand. He almost breached boundaries he knew were well beyond the friendship they were working to rekindle with this outpouring of trust. Instead, he kept his hands together, and he listened.

“How much do you believe in the Six?”

It _wa_ s an odd question. One might consider it philosophical, if he was talking to anyone else. The kind of controversy family fought over at holiday dinners.

“I can’t really say, one way or the other,” Ignis answered, slowly – he’d never given his faith much thought, if he even had one. “I suppose I feel as most Lucians do. The legends state that the Six must at least exist. Whether or not I believe that they’re of celestial rank… I can’t be certain. I’ve never seen one.”

“You believe that they could be terrestrial?” Noctis asked, and Ignis was struck again by just how much _older_ he was. When they were kids, they talked of the Astrals like made up monsters in their games of pretend. Powers to obtain or beings to slay to save an imaginary princess. “Do you think they’re not infallible?”

“All I know is that my belief lies with the Crown,” Ignis told him. “I believe in your father. And I believe in you.”

That made Noct’s eyes brighten, the weariness of a knowledge he couldn’t fully articulate losing some of its weight. Ignis was proud that he could provide him with that much relief. That he proved he could trust in him after all this time apart.

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that,” Noctis laughed, raspy with relief.

“I’ve got your back, Noct. Whatever you ask of me, you have it. Without question.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

This time, Noctis reached across the table to take his hand, uninhibited by the social constructs of Insomnia like Ignis was. His touch was warm and familiar over Ignis’s cold knuckles. Like Ignis was coming home as much as Noctis was.

“Thanks, Iggy.”

* * *

It would be years before Noctis collected on that promise.

Years of convincing his father to forsake the Ring of the Lucii. Of teaching him how to commune with the old gods. They weren’t like the Six. They didn’t need an Oracle to serve as their mouthpiece. They didn’t demand the sacrifice of kings to save them. Carbuncle only traded in good dreams for good deeds.

Noctis harnessed the Crystal, a bond shared with an otherworldly element that he could never quite explain. He was connected with the Crystal in a way no king before him had been. He used it differently than the Six vaguely suggested they should.

He didn’t use the Ring. He didn’t heed Bahamut’s prophecy. Ignis didn’t know how he made it work, how he made a different voice more prevalent throughout the Crystal’s maw than the Draconian’s. How he entreated a forgotten dream god to serve as his courier between worlds.

How, instead of fourteen Kings before him, he fashioned himself the powers of fourteen souls from other worlds. Fourteen powers of fourteen heroes whose names Eos would never know. Fourteen heroes who, Noctis would sometimes try to explain to Ignis, had been in his position before.

Who _slayed_ gods, who _changed destiny_ , who took fate in their own hands, seized their own lives from pretender gods and still saved their own worlds.

Ten years had taught Noctis more than two thousand years of history had seemed to teach all of Eos.

There was still much to do on their world. There was still the Oracle to rescue from the Empire, and there was “the Accursed,” the starscourge, vague references to figures and legends in ancient texts that they still needed to fully understand before Noct’s destiny could be realized and spare him its grisly end.

But things were better with Noct’s new insights into old dogmas. King Regis was in better health than Ignis could ever remember seeing him in when he discarded the Ring of the Lucii. A gamble, taking down the Wall when the Empire was so eager to seize them. But, surprisingly, as if the Empire hadn’t been prepared for that move, they didn’t move themselves.

When the Lady Lunafreya of Tenebrae had learned of Noct’s return, she sent forward Messengers that could pass through enemy blockades to communicate with him. And over the years, the two of them learned from each other. She told him of the gods will, he told her what one of his phantom friends had to say about gods demanding a woman’s sacrifice to save the world.

Then, there was the matter of this enigmatic “Accursed,” a figure in Luna’s head that she could only describe in her notes as a patch of darkness the gods all feared. They could give her no face, no name, nothing to help her discover its identity – if it even had one. The key to the starscourge seemed to lie with this figure – one of Noct’s phantoms, though quiet in his demeanor, seemed to relate to that all-powerful ancient evil traitor card.

Things were less frightening with the context of other dimensions at Noct’s beck and call. Things were easier to understand, easier to puzzle out and solve.

And when the day finally came that all the pieces fell together, when they learned the Accursed’s name, devised the lure to bring him to the Crystal – a peace treaty signing with the Empire, a trick on Insomnia’s soil, and a gamble for all their safety – Noctis was ready.

Noctis stood tall at the base of the Crystal, such a long way from the injured boy that had been taken from them by Niflheim’s malice. So much older than the nervous, out of time man that returned to them so many years ago.

And when the Accursed came, slinking through the chambers of the Citadel through shadows that no Glaive or Guard could see to come to mock the Crystal and its servants…

They were ready.

“Hard to explain?”

Noctis nodded, head heavy as Ignis pressed another warm towel to his forehead. He hadn’t been there when it happened – Noctis insisted it was too dangerous for any of them to be there to help him, and promised that he wasn’t alone.

That he would return when it was over.

And he kept that promise.

Though he came out of the chamber limping, smoking, clothes in tatters like he’d been in a long, hard battle, eyes shifting with the thousand colored stars which they’d come to familiarize with the souls of the other worlds.

He was weakened by the ordeal, as they had expected. And now, Ignis was there to care for him like he couldn’t when they were kids. He stayed at his side as he rested, the blinding gold of a rescued dawn streaming through the curtains.

“It’s over, Iggy,” Noctis assured him. “Quick and painless.”

“Hardly either.”

Noctis smiled. He was proud of himself. As he had every right to be. Ten years of isolation had not gone to waste. Ten years of his father’s heartache and Noctis had returned with the gift of a long life together for them both.

He had returned their savior. In more ways than the prophetic Chosen King.

At last, they were all ready to live again.

The Carbuncle totem sat on the bedside table as Ignis urged Noctis to rest. He could have sworn he saw it’s faded ruby horn glow with pride.

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody can convince me. That if Noct's fellow Final Fantasy peers got wind of what he was destined for. That they would take that shit laying down. And Carbuncle knows it lol This is as fanficcy as fanfiction gets, friends. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
